


fascinating new thing

by SafelyCapricious



Series: mea culpa [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Behind the Scenes, F/M, Fic amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: It was going on three months since Skye had accidently insulted Sitwell (“I didn’t know he was there! Why didn’t you tell me he was behind me?”) and they were still getting stupidly easy missions that didn’t leave many opportunities for learning opportunities for Skye – and that were driving Grant slightly insane with boredom.NOTE: THIS IS INCOMPLETE. THIS WILL NOT BE FINISHED. THIS IS A FIC AMNESTY FIC IN WHICH I SURRENDER TO THE FACT THAT I AM NEVER GOING TO FINISH SOME OF THESE STUPID THINGS.





	fascinating new thing

**Author's Note:**

> For those not playing along at home, this is under fic amnesty. This fic(s) is not done and will never be done. In an attempt to unclutter myself so I can, hopefully, write something new in this most ambitious year of 2018, I have decided to go through and declare amnesty for myself for a variety of fic sins. 
> 
> This is...actually the first fic I started writing for Biospecialist, I think? Or maybe just the first long fic I attempted (and utterly failed at). You can see my attempts at planning below.
> 
> Obviously before I realized that if I plan too much than I fail (seriously, I CANNOT do outlines that are anything other than super vague, or my brain thinks I've told the story already and it just never gets written).
> 
> I learned a lot from this.
> 
> It's a fucking mess.
> 
> I'm mostly putting it here so I can feel good about moving the document into a "never to be completed" folder.
> 
> Enjoy!

Background:

There is Hydra, but Ward isn’t it. Ward does get “rescued” by Garrett, but ends up with May as an S.O. before Garrett can turn him Hydra. Coulson tries to put a team together, but Stark gets board one day and starts looking into SHIELD and realizes Coulson isn’t dead…and his team idea dies because he gets to keep playing with the superheros.

 

Skye still gets picked up for Hacking, but this time not rising tide stuff – instead she’s just trying to hack SHIELD to find out about her parents. So SHIELD brings her in, and Fury decides that if she wants that info she gets to work for it and promises her answers if she can prove herself trust worthy and make it to level 2. She argues with him about it and so doesn’t have to attend COMM School like he originally wants her too, and instead (at Maria’s suggestion, who still drew poop with daggers around it to describe Ward’s people skills, and because she thinks it’ll be hysterical/good for him) gets to be trained by Grant.

 

They’ve been working together 6 months when she compares Sitwell’s head to an egg – not knowing that Sitwell has just turned the corner and can hear her. They end up getting crap jobs for 6 months – Grant is angry at her about it, she’s angry at herself about it, and this is just one in a long line of stupid assignments.

 

Simmons and Fitz did not pass their field test, and aren’t allowed in the field (no exceptions without Coulson requesting them). Simmons was briefly involved with analyzing frozen Steve, but never got to meet him awake. Both were involved with the original Tesseract, and although they got out, not without injuries (she has a scar down her side that she’s decently self conscious about, from edge of breast to small of her back, but it doesn’t hinder her at all, because Fitz took the force of the falling beam for her and she’d never complain about it anyways because he came out worse. He has a very slight limp that you don’t notice unless you’re looking for it – or are a specialist and ergo stupid observant, from a knee injury that he sustained.)

 

Both continue to be very much famous as FitzSimmons and continue to invent awesome things.

 

The ice machine shenanigans still happen, but because Fitz doesn’t go there to deliver the talk they never make it work – so instead of full scale storm, we get exploding device. And the academy decides that the thing to do is to have impressive graduates come back, and they deliver the “don’t be a super villain, no one likes a super villain” talk, but then they also decide that a reasonable thing to do is to do a type of auction where the students get to bid on the graduates (to spend the day with them – technically a meal and then a discussion about what they’re working on) in the hopes that being around them can help encourage them away from evil – and since the students won’t necessarily have large amounts of money to spend, they are allowed to have their finished experiments (not done for classes) evaluated for monetary worth prior to auction and use that money to bid – all actual money will go to counseling services and shit to hopefully keep this from happening again.

 

Unfortunately, about one week prior to the auction, there comes to be a kidnapping threat on one of the participating graduates (Agent Atler), with the belief that there may be other threats on the other graduates that haven’t been found – and so each scientist gets a field agent assigned to them for protection over the course of the week. Even though Ward is a specialist, since Skye is not (and they are still on crap duty, thanks Sitwell) they get assigned to FitzSimmons. Because naturally, Fitz and Simmons continue to spend all their time together, and with both Grant and Skye that shouldn’t be a problem, right? Plus everyone else just has field agents, not specialists.

 

 

 

It was going on three months since Skye had accidently insulted Sitwell (“I didn’t know he was there! Why didn’t you tell me he was behind me?”) and they were still getting stupidly easy missions that didn’t leave many opportunities for learning opportunities for Skye – and that were driving Grant slightly insane with boredom.

 

But after three months of these assignments, Grant wasn’t even vaguely surprised when the new orders came down and he found out they’d be acting as glorified babysitters, again. At least this time they’d be at one of the Academies, admittedly, not the one that Skye should have attended if she had followed the normal protocol, but exposure to the Academy could be good for her understanding. Or at least that was the most pragmatic he was allowing himself to be about it, since all requests (that were starting to sound much more like pleads) to be put on better assignments were dismissed.

 

“This is really stupid.” Skye was making faces at the mission write up, and before he could point out that it was her fault they had to do it, (“It’s really more Sitwell’s fault though, he’s not behind me is he?”) she continued on, “Are they serious about a date auction – for scientists?”

 

He turned away so that he could continue packing his bag, and so that she wouldn’t see him rolling his eyes. “There’s been in increase in defection from SciTech recently.”

 

Behind his back, as he systematically folded more identical black shirts, Skye made a face, sticking her tongue out and wrinkling her nose, before composing herself, and trying to prompt him, because the mission briefing didn’t explain anything about defections and she still wasn’t sure what that had to do with scientist dates – or how Ward knew about it. “And…?”

 

He huffed, turned back to her with his arms crossed and an unimpressed look, “And so they hope that having the chance to win a meeting with some of the brightest graduates, who are all happy and working for SHIELD will encourage the cadets not to jump ship.”

 

She grinned, brightly, in his face and gave him two thumbs up.

 

He ignored her and finished packing, and said while walking out the door, “We’re leaving in ten.”

 

He could hear her protest, “What? But I haven’t packed yet!” and he grinned to himself as he headed to get a plane.

 

Skye spent most of the ride looking up Fitzsimmons, who they were supposed to be guarding. “I can’t tell if our scientist is male or female – these pronouns are all over the place. Also, he or she invented the ICERs! That’s awesome.”

 

Grant was good at tuning her out at this point in their partnership, and just hummed noncommittally as she continued to ask questions, then proceed to answer them herself.

 

This would be Skye’s first trip to the Sandbox, and so she was understandably impressed and at least momentarily speechless. (Grant was too realistic to think it would last terribly long.) So when the security guards simply checked their passes than after a quick glance at a tablet, told them, “Head to lab 2A for FitzSimmons.” Blandly, Skye didn’t even have a snappy come back.

 

Lab 2A was one of the biggest on the second floor, with wide windows looking into half of it from the hallway, and huge machinery that Grant had no idea the use of. There were two scientists in lab coats. The male scientist was gesturing wildly while waving what looked like an electric razor through the air. The female scientist was staring him down, arms crossed, and occasionally pointing dramatically at a beaker of something bubbling.

 

Grant could already feel the headache that dealing with a scientist was going to bring, and he couldn’t even pick out which one was Fitzsimmons. Not that it would change much as he was sure, based on ten seconds of observation, that either was going to be exhausting.

 

He allowed Skye to proceed him into the lab. Naturally neither scientist even looked over at the sound of the door opening, and he was stuck by how dangerous it must be to be that unaware. After a few moments where they continued to argue, and he didn’t understand about eighty percent of the words they were using, he cleared his throat.

 

They continued to argue. He sighed, Skye grinned laughingly up at him, and he said, “Excuse me, We’re here to pick up Fitzsimmons.”

 

The two scientists turned in unison, and blinked, also in unison and oddly freakily. She nodded, “Right, we’ll be ready in ten minutes.” They both immediately started packing things up, only exchanging partial sentences like, “Do you have the—“ “Yup, here.” “I told you to stop—“ “I’ll stop when you listen—“

 

Grant blinked again, cleared his throat again, “We? I’m sorry, we’re only here for Fitzsimmons.”

 

They turned, still weirdly coordinated and tilted their heads at him, this time the man spoke, “Yes. Fitz-Simmons.”

 

The woman pointed at the man, “He’s Fitz.”

 

“She’s Simmons.” He returned the favor and pointed at her.

 

Skye started laughing.

 

Grant really hated Sitwell.

 

 

 

_Ward is antisocial. Skye asks them all about what sorts of things they’ve invented – Grant is reluctantly impressed_

_They get to the academy, FitzSimmons are very popular, Grant is not surprised_

_Instead of one big lecture, each “guest” gives a minilecture or two, right before theirs there is a small electromagnetic storm caused by a doodad – they very cheerfully and quickly dismantle it, look after the few slightly injured students and give their lecture_

_(Grant is more impressed – Skye is hearteyes at the pair of them)_

_They continue to follow them around, Grant is hopeless in the face of Simmon’s enthusiasm._

_They show off some of their prototypes, Grant tells them the gun is off – queue Skye and Fitz and Simmons making fun of him._

_Skye and Simmons talk about why Skye decided to become an agent_

_Fitz helps Skye do some upgrades on her computer_

_One of the older students keeps hitting on Simmons (Simmons has zero idea, Grant looms in the background)_

_Finally the auction. Grant has them schedule their “dates” so that they don’t overlap. Fitz goes for a ridiculous amount to a group of engineers who pooled resources, no objections from Grant of Skye_

_Hitting on Older Student starts off bidding for Simmons, Grant seems him as a risk (Skye agrees, dude has beady eyes), so Grant bids until that student stops bidding, but drops out after (Skye might notice the confusion/happiness that then falls slightly when Grant stops – but Grant is too busy scowling at the older student), a girl (head of her class, aiming for the sandbox) ends up winning, Grant does not examine why he’s so pleased that it’s a girl that won_

 

Fitz ends up going to a group of five cadets, the majority of which have glasses so stereotypically thick Grant does, for a moment, suspect it might be a dastardly cover. But he’s pretty positive the combined group couldn’t fight off a wet paper bag, even if the glasses are an affect, so he’s not terribly worried.

 

He assumes the bids for Simmons will go much the same, and they are, until he realizes that one of the people who keeps bidding over the groups is the older cadet that had been stalking Simmons earlier. (“Okay, calm down Robocop, he definitely wasn’t stalking her – I mean, he’s super creepy and I would not be surprised if he wanted to wear her skin, but he was not stalking her.”)

 

_Simmons date goes off without a hitch, no problem, they talk biochem all night and neither Grant nor Skye have any idea what’s going on (Fitz is on lockdown in a lab, so okay with it), Grant is not oblivious that the girl keeps giggling at him, but he ignores it. Skye is amused._

_Fitz date ends up with him being kidnapped. They end up rescuing him by Skye managing to track him, Simmons providing a knock out gas, a nearly invisible face mask and an injection to wake Fitz up, and Grant actively carrying him out (because they made him jog with them and if fucked up his knee)._

_Fitz is in the hospital being looked after while Skye and Simmons head over (Skye stayed with Simmons and they watched via video), and Simmons throws her arms around Grant and kisses him square on the mouth before rushing into check on Fitz – Grant is frozen, slightly pulled down from where Simmons moved him, gaping, and Skye is laughing at him._

 

 

 

Possible other drabbles follow:

  * FitzSimmons are called on to analyze the results of Thor’s trip to London, Ward and Skye are oddly willing to “babysit” (Short)
  * Skye corners Simmons to make her talk about Ward, Fitz rolls his eyes a lot (short)
  * Simmons and Fitz get rescued by May, Simmons spends a large amount of time fangirling and Ward is weirdly proud that he gets to tell Simmons May is his S.O. (Simmons is dutifully impressed) (Short)
  * Ward and Skye on a mission with May and or Bobbi and or Tripp when Hydra is revealed – FitzSimmons are at the sandbox – no news on who controls the sandbox and he manages to convince them that it’s a good idea for them to check it out and try to rescue SHIELD agents from there – they find the base is mostly Hydra, but FitzSimmons plus a huge number of other scientists have managed to retain a wing of one of the laboratory buildings – and hold their own. They are very glad for the rescue though. (Possibly having to jump out of the building?) And they lead the group to the Canyon (picturepicturepicture!!!) which is not taken over by Hydra, though obviously did have some problems, set up base there but not enough room (because SHIELD only has two bases, this one and Providence, so everyone there and this the only one with room for family before, so still families there – including family of agents who were killed in action) and so Ward and Skye and FitzSimmons and whoever else was on the mission (May/Bobbi/Tripp) end up living together (Long/multichapter)
  * Living together shenanigans (Couple of drabbles, short each, maybe longish together)
  * Ward almost not coming back from a mission, Simmons freaking out (Longish oneshot)
  * Ward actually asking Simmons out once he’s recovered (drabble)
  * Idk, other things.



 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Did you not read the notes at the beginning, the notes in the summary or the tags? (Fair, I do that all the time.)
> 
> Well conveniently for you, this note is to tell you that no, you're not insane, this fic is a mess and plotting and just...a mess. 
> 
> This is a fic amnesty fic, which is to say, I am just throwing it out to the universe because I need to get rid of some of the things I'm never going to finish just so I can clear up some emotional/mental/creative room to make some new shit. So here we go.
> 
> Happy 2018.


End file.
